Russian Sign Language

Russian Sign Language

About the Russian Sign Langugae

There are no official statistics about the number of Deaf people in Russia. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) 10% of population have hearing problems and 2% serious hearing problems. So in Russia about 13 million people have hearing problems and 2,6 million have serious problems. Also, there are Deaf people who use Russian Sign Language living in Post-Soviet Union Countries such as: Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. Totally there are more than 20 million people who have serious hearing problems and typically use RSL. Among them around 4 million use RSL in everyday life. There are about 4 million people who would use a visual New Testament Translation in Russian sign language. The Christian churches indicate constantly increasing number of Deaf people who want access to the Word of God, but don’t have this opportunity. The visual method of presenting the scriptures is the natural and best way to give Deaf communities access to the Bible. The Visual Bible for the Deaf is for users of Russian Sign Language (RSL), that is Deaf communities not only in Russia but also countries of the former USSR. A complete New Testament will eventually be available as a series of video productions for all books of the New Testament in natural Russian Sign Language used by Deaf people. The video translations are very important for Deaf people; these include helpful information about context as well - for example, tracking the direction of Abraham's journey on a map demonstrates what the ancient tent looked like, temple, worship place, all kind of schemes and tables.

Get involved

Deaf people have difficulties reading a written language because their first language is a visual one and a spoken/written language will be a second that has to be learnt with great difficulty without sound.
According to statistics about 40% of the Deaf receive poor education. About 40% have general education, 10% have very good education and 10% are not educated at all.
Our primary target audience is the Deaf having general and good education; secondary target audience is the Deaf having poor education. These categories may require different approaches for RSL New Testament translation.
You can get involved by;
-Praying for our work
-Support us to translate Bibles for the deaf in Russia with a donation